


By Dim Lamplight

by groovyphilia



Category: X-Men (Movies), X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom, X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)
Genre: And Ororo, And everybody really, Gen, M/M, and Tony Stark, hints of Erik Lehnsherr
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-11
Updated: 2012-05-11
Packaged: 2017-11-05 04:25:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/402417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/groovyphilia/pseuds/groovyphilia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charles has good reason to believe that his predictions for the future are accurate. Like any sentimental man, he calls a cab.</p>
            </blockquote>





	By Dim Lamplight

**Author's Note:**

> Set roughly in X-3 right before Charles’ death. Inspired by a post on Tumblr about an old lady.
> 
> I apologise if a New York cab driver occasionally thinks in Britishisms; I’m very, very poor with American slang. Help.

  


_“There’s something you’re not telling us.”_

_Charles offered no response. He could feel Ororo’s exasperation cresting as he silently continued down the hall._

_Still, she wasn’t entirely correct._

_There were plenty of things that Charles wasn’t telling people._

+

Westchester is a pretty nice neighbourhood, the cab driver decides. A lot of posh old houses and manicured lawns, not that he can see it too well in the evening dark. More importantly, it’s a smooth and lazy drive – no inconvenient, teeth-jarring potholes in the road, no cracked and broken speed bumps. A long, winding pathway. One could almost fall asleep while on it.

Well, no, one couldn’t. He’s driving to a  _school_ ; some kids have probably got it into their heads to skip out for the night. As a fine, upstanding adult, he probably shouldn’t approve, but it has long been his business to refrain from asking questions. People tend to give you bigger tips that way.

He’s surprised, when he pulls up outside Xavier’s Institute, to see an elderly man in a wheelchair waiting patiently by the gate.  

“I’m sorry,” the man says, when the driver steps out of his cab. A teacher at the school; a professor of something, probably. “I’m not quite used to this chair, I’m afraid. Would you mind giving me a hand?”

The elderly man is indeed staring at the chair with mild bemusement.  _Strange_ , the driver thinks, as he bends to figure out the complicated metal levers. Either he just lost his legs, or he usually sat in something else.

 _Probably the first option, poor sod,_  the driver thinks. Inexplicably, the fellow looks amused.

_(His passenger’s expression looks strangely shadowed as he struggles with the stainless steel lever. “You a teacher?” he says, to keep himself from cursing._

_“A professor,” is the evasive response. He was right, then.)_

“Where to?” he asks, once they’re both settled in, collapsible wheelchair safely in the boot.

“Nowhere in particular,” the professor says, settling into his seat. He wraps his coat more tightly around himself, despite being shielded from the evening chill. “But I’d like you to drive through downtown, please – take the second turn to the right when you reach it.”

No questions policy. Right. The driver’s had stranger requests, anyway.

+

He manages to keep to his creed for about fifteen more minutes.

“So why the tour, gramps?” the driver asks eventually, navigating through the winding route. It isn’t the shortest route to downtown, but admittedly scenic.

There is a pause. “I don’t have much longer, I think,” the professor says haltingly. “And I feel I’ve earned myself a night off.”

The driver looks the old man over. He is old, yeah, and in a wheelchair, but he looks pretty healthy.

As though reading his mind, the professor’s eyes flick towards him, holding his gaze for a few uncomfortable seconds – then he smiles.

“I’m not ill, if that is what you’re wondering. I simply might have an accident.”

“Oh,” the driver says, nonplussed. He mulls this over for a few moments, before a light flicks on in his mind. “You one of those muties, then?”

The corner of the professor’s mouth twitches. “I can’t see the future, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Well, fucking lot of information that was. Strangely, however, the driver can’t bring himself to care. The concern slides out of his mind, fluid and sinuous until it seemed like the least important thing in the world.  _Like water off a duck,_  he thinks dreamily.

The streetlights flicker outside, sodium-yellow light lending a warm cast to the grey pavement. The taxi cab drives steadily on, into the night.

+

He has thoroughly abandoned the fine art of minding his own business by the time the immense white structure looms up in the distance.

“Missus?”

“Unmarried, my dear chap. Shocking, I know.”

“Whatever. So no kids, I guess?”

“Hundreds,” says the old man matter-of-factly. He chuckles when the driver blinks incredulously. “I told you, I’m a teacher.”

“Oh, yeah.”

 The professor asks him to stop the cab when they reach the base of the white structure. He peers at it through the dim light – it’s weird, that’s for certain. Most of the thing seems pretty old – metal has rusted in places, and a curiously twisted ladder snakes peculiarly round the base – and yet, other parts seem to have been rebuilt, shining steel plates and bolts against dulled white paint. Contorted bars and beams stick out in cordoned-off areas. Rust gathers on their misshapen ends.

 _It’s a satellite dish,_  he realises, peering upward. One that had been wrecked pretty badly at the base at some point, if the signs of construction were of any indication.

The professor stays silent for a long time, staring at the metal looming above them. The driver gets the impression that he’s forgotten he’s in a taxi cab.

“Shit repair job,” he remarks. His passenger makes a quiet noise of affirmation, and eventually, asks that they carry on.

+

Stark Industries looms up in the distance, at some point. For some reason, the professor chuckles.

“Don’t mind me,” his passenger says, responding to his quizzical glance. “An old man has stories you wouldn’t  _believe_.”

They pass bars and nightclubs, city lights glittering overhead. Scantily-clad women lean languidly against the walls of the buildings, cigarette smoke spiralling into the night sky. The professor eyes him critically through the rear-view mirror – the driver coughs, and keeps his gaze determinedly on the road.

He runs a red light when a particularly buxom young lady decides it’s an excellent time to bend over. Evidently, his passenger intends to punish him for his driving misdemeanour.

“I patronised a strip club once, in my youth,” the professor says sombrely. The driver feels extremely frightened. “Well, several times, but there was this one particularly notable incident…”

“Yeah?” he offers weakly, wondering if he wants to hear the rest.

“Oh, yes,” is the serene response. “Through the shrewd engineering of my companion, we all ended up in a private room with a bed.”

The old man smiles fondly, apparently deeply warmed by his strip-club related memories. The driver can only hope for such a future. “He offered to show her ours if she showed us hers,” the man adds cheerily.

The driver is sorely tempted to turn on the radio. Despite the stony silence, the professor laughs heartily.

 The radio does go on, in the end. He finds himself switching it to the oldies station when he reaches for the fifth time to turn off the meter ( _seriously, how could something keep slipping his mind_?) and Elvis Presley’s mournful voice fills the cab, much to his chagrin.

 _Sixties music isn’t so bad,_  he eventually decides. The professor certainly seems to enjoy it, humming absently along to several bars. _Darling, so it goes; some things are meant to be._

He finally manages to switch off the meter on his seventh attempt. The professor sighs, as though admitting defeat to a long, hard battle.

+

“Stop,” the professor says suddenly. The driver blinks, and pulls into the last parking spot outside the cafe. Warm light filters through stained glass. A young couple pulls open the glass door with a jingle, wrapping their scarves around themselves. The inviting scent of freshly-roasted coffee wafts out momentarily from the open door.  

The professor glances at him knowingly, as he settles himself into the wheelchair. They end up with a cup of coffee each, and him offering to push the chair around to the back alley.

 _‘Big fat load of nothing’_  is how the driver would describe the area, at least at this time of the year. He’s been here a few times, during the Christmas season. Jam-packed to hell with last minute shoppers, but behind the cafes, it’s always been a whole different story. Last year, there had been the usual strings of fairy lights hanging from the rooftops, and Christmas trees set up in the backyard, dripping with artificial icicles and glittering ornaments. Somebody had made a valiant attempt at ice sculptures a few years back; he remembers something vaguely reindeer-shaped.

“Not much to look at, without the snow,” he remarks, sipping his coffee – then notes with alarm that his companion’s eyes have gone suspiciously misty. He fumbles for a moment, casting about desperately for something more to say. “You visit this place, often?” is what he manages, somewhat lamely.

“Just once, on a journey with an old friend,” the professor says, “when I was a young man. I must admit I had many lofty dreams and ambitions. Most, I don’t regret. Others…”

He pauses. The cab driver thinks he sees his shoulder tremble briefly, and feels immensely awkward. He wonders if he ought to pat him on the back, but somehow, but that feels like it would cheapen the moment.

“It’s not so much regret,” the old man muses after some time, “as much as the fact that the young can be so terribly certain that something is, against all odds, meant to be.”

“Yeah?” the driver murmurs.

“Mmmm,” hums the professor. For a long moment, he says nothing more.

It’s with some confusion that the driver finds himself sitting in the cafe some time later, warming his hands around a second cup of coffee. Out in the streets, a clock chimes midnight – fifteen minutes that he couldn’t remember, then. Christ, maybe he should see a doctor.

He trips out of the exit, a flurry of apologies at the tip of his tongue, only to find the professor waiting by the door to the taxi cab, gnarled fingers laced together in his lap. He’s assured that his departure hadn’t been sudden in the slightest, that he had said he’d gone for another espresso – never mind that he couldn’t recall any of it.

Spacing out on the job is bad for business, he reprimands himself sternly as he helps the professor back into the cab. Much of the next half-hour passes in silence.

“How do men choose what to fight for?” the professor says suddenly, startling him. He glances in the rear-view mirror, but his passenger merely stares listlessly out the window.

“We fight for what we love,” he answers automatically, and instantly regrets it. The fellow was probably looking for something a little better thought out.

The responding laugh is unexpected. It’s strained, and gives the odd impression of crumbling at the edges, but it’s a laugh nonetheless.

“That might explain it,” the professor says wryly, and it’s about as much as the driver can get out of him for the rest of the night. 

+

They keep driving through the night, making several more stops before dawn. The professor talks at length about his stint as a guest lecturer in New York University in the Fifties, and points out an electronics store that used be a quaint little bookshop. He learns about two children hiding in its dusty corners after World War Two, a boy reading to his golden-haired little sister. He learns that the night is only so long, but if it weren’t, there’d be plenty more destinations marked on the map. Oxford University. The Lincoln memorial. Cairo.

The driver thinks that he’s catching hints of a stormy romance, somewhere.  “…One that got away?” he ventures cautiously.

“Oh,” the professor says, “decidedly more complicated.”

Sunlight is creasing over the horizon when he pulls to a stop outside Grand Central Station. The professor makes no move to exit the cab, and merely sits in silence, staring into the lifting darkness.

“I’m tired,” he says softly. “I think I’ll go home.”

Chatty as he had been moments before, silence once again makes its home between the two. The driver turns on the radio again; the strains of Acker Bilk’s  _Stranger on the Shore_  crackle from the speakers. Music fills the empty spaces of absent conversation, and the driver finds himself marvelling at how different Westchester looked in the morning.

 “Thank you for showing an old man some kindness,” the professor says, when he’s helped into the wheelchair. He reaches out, clasping the driver’s hand in a surprisingly firm handshake, then reaches for his wallet.

“No, no charge,” the driver finds himself saying hastily. Charity wasn’t something he was known for, but damn if he was going to make this guy pay after all that.

“I insist,” the professor says pleasantly.

“Then I insist too. Look, seriously, put that away.”

There is a pause. The professor slowly stows away his wallet. The final blow in that particular battle, it seemed.

_(He finds the full fare and a generous tip in his pocket, when he gets home. Placing it there would have been impossible, short of a magic trick.)_

“Don’t belittle compassion,” the professor says softly, when he waves off his thanks. “The kindness of humans like you was what made me want to be a better man.”

…Well, he has no idea what to make of that.

 _Philosophising is best left to old professors_ , he thinks, as he shuts the car door – and realises with a pang that his passenger, if his word is to be trusted, won’t be around very much longer. It’s a curious recovery of information, like fishing something from the back of his mind with a carelessly cast reel.

For some reason, this makes him wind down the window.

“Could I get your name, sir?” he calls after the professor’s retreating back. The chair halts on the pavement, dry leaves crunching under the wheels.

“Charles,” the professor says finally. The answer is so quiet, it’s barely audible, but there they had it.

_(The name slips and slithers around the corners of his mind, fine sand pouring through the cracks of his fingers. He remembers kind eyes, a forehead lined with wrinkles, a quiet dignity occasionally broken with youthful mischief – the memories fade at the edges, curling in on themselves, as he slumps through the door and collapses into bed._

_The night is less than a dream by morning.)_


End file.
